The proposed study examined direct and indirect relationships between neighborhood quality and children's adjustment while controlling for family demographic characteristics among a nationally representative sample of 1,738 American families. Models examined are specified by ecological systems theory and by prior empirical research. The overarching goals are to better understand normative influences on youth development and to inform community-based efforts to promote mental health. The study investigates two indicators of neighborhood quality, resources for youth and for youth in the neighborhood social controls which are expected to influence directly child and adolescent development. Resources are expected to predict positively youth adjustment. Processes expected to mediate this relationship are youths' activity participation, aspirations for future success and well-being, and beliefs that adults care about them and are dependable. Factors expected to moderate the expected relations between resources and adjustment are parental education, child gender, geographic region of the country, and parent involvement with their children. The measure of social control, presence of perceived problems, is expected to exert a direct influence on youth adjustment such that greater social control predicts better adjustment. Parental efficacy, peer conduct, role models, and parental monitoring and support, child gender, and ethnicity are expected to moderate it. The methodology proposed in the present study will contribute uniquely in at least three ways by using: (a) a nationally representative sample of American families, (b) a sample drawn to represent Blacks and Hispanics in addition to Whites, and (c) structural equation modeling, the analytic method of choice to model complex phenomena, confirm expected paths, and control measurement error.